HELP LINE

There were overdoses every day.

Cakes and shrooms in pretzel tins.

Doppelgängers floating
through labyrinths.

Insects crawling on the sill
of the broken window.

Do you feel vermin crawling over you?

They’d meet at the gravel pit
just past the graveyard.

Sour scent of marigolds.

Flocks of dark birds 
stabbing at maggoty confetti,

I have mixed emotions,
mixed emotions.

The bones of a life
no matter how you count the bodies.

There were overdoses every day.

The Art of Patricia Whiting